


can't keep running after yesterday

by outruntheavalanche



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Angst, Gen, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-28
Updated: 2012-03-28
Packaged: 2017-11-02 15:17:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outruntheavalanche/pseuds/outruntheavalanche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Robin tried not to think about Ted too much those first few days.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't keep running after yesterday

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for all of S6, particularly the most recent episodes. Title from “All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye,” by John Mayer. Unbeta’d. I guess this is my first proper _How I Met Your Mother_ fic. Sort of.

Robin tried not to think about Ted too much those first few days. The wound was too raw, too open, and not nearly ready to scab over just yet. And, Robin being Robin, she knew she’d pick at it whenever she got the chance, if she wasn’t careful. Better just to ignore it and hope the sick feeling that gripped her by the throat would eventually fade.

Then again, that was what Ted had been doing the last five years, pretending he didn’t feel anything, pushing the feelings down, sabotaging himself from ever moving on. Robin loved Ted—she really did, just not in the way he wanted—but she didn’t want to end up like Ted, clinging to the past because it was safer than the unknown. Ted was trapped—by the past, by his inability to ever let go—and Robin would never let that be her.

It was kind of why she’d turned Barney down. She really did want him, or at least she was pretty sure she did. They were great together, and they’d always been; every time he looked at her, she felt electric, _alive_ —and yet it still felt too safe. Running back to Barney was still running back to the past, running back to something safe and familiar.

No, Barney wasn’t “safe,” by any definition of the word, but, really, both Barney and Ted were her past. There was a comfort in the familiar, in the safe embrace of past lovers, even if Barney was wild and unpredictable, and Ted was kind of self-absorbed and _trapped_. Robin wouldn’t let herself choose comfort above all else; it wasn’t the kind of person she was, wasn’t the kind of person she prided herself on being. If she gave in and ran back to either one of them, she’d lose what made her so freaking _awesome_.

It _was_ tempting, though, and she wasn’t going to pretend she hadn’t thought about it. When she thought she was pregnant with Barney’s child and she wasn’t freaking out inside, it really sounded kind of nice, the idea of being with him, slipping back into that familiar routine like a hand into a glove. And when Ted confessed to her how he really felt—how he still felt, after all these years apart—she let herself wonder, wander back down that well-worn path for just a moment, before she remembered herself and stepped back into the present.

No, she wasn’t going to retreat. She was going to move on, move forward. She was going to pour herself into her career, and she was going to let those old wounds scar over. Her name was Robin Charles Scherbatsky Jr. and she was freaking awesome.


End file.
